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THE LEGACY OF CAIN

By Wilkie Collins

To

MRS. HENRY POWELL BARTLEY:

Permit me to add your name to my name, in publishing this novel. The
pen which has written my books cannot be more agreeably employed than in
acknowledging what I owe to the pen which has skillfully and patiently
helped me, by copying my manuscripts for the printer.

WILKIE COLLINS.

Wimpole Street, 6th December, 1888.

THE LEGACY OF CAIN.

First Period: 1858 1859. EVENTS IN THE PRISON, RELATED BY THE GOVERNOR.

CHAPTER I. THE GOVERNOR EXPLAINS.

At the request of a person who has claims on me that I must not disown,
I consent to look back through a long interval of years and to describe
events which took place within the walls of an English prison during the
earlier period of my appointment as Governor.

Viewing my task by the light which later experience casts on it, I think
I shall act wisely by exercising some control over the freedom of my
pen.

I propose to pass over in silence the name of the town in which is
situated the prison once confided to my care. I shall observe a similar
discretion in alluding to individuals some dead, some living, at the
present time.

Being obliged to write of a woman who deservedly suffered the extreme
penalty of the law, I think she will be sufficiently identified if I
call her The Prisoner. Of the four persons present on the evening before
her execution three may be distinguished one from the other by allusion
to their vocations in life. I here introduce them as The Chaplain, The
Minister, and The Doctor. The fourth was a young woman. She has no claim
on my consideration; and, when she is mentioned, her name may appear.
If these reserves excite suspicion, I declare beforehand that they
influence in no way the sense of responsibility which commands an honest
man to speak the truth.

CHAPTER II. THE MURDERESS ASKS QUESTIONS.

The first of the events which I must now relate was the conviction of
The Prisoner for the murder of her husband.

They had lived together in matrimony for little more than two years. The
husband, a gentleman by birth and education, had mortally offended his
relations in marrying a woman of an inferior rank of life. He was
fast declining into a state of poverty, through his own reckless
extravagance, at the time when he met with his death at his wife's hand.

Without attempting to excuse him, he deserved, to my mind, some tribute
of regret. It is not to be denied that he was profligate in his
habits and violent in his temper. But it is equally true that he was
affectionate in the domestic circle, and, when moved by wisely applied
remonstrance, sincerely penitent for sins committed under temptation
that overpowered him. If his wife had killed him in a fit of jealous
rage under provocation, be it remembered, which the witnesses
proved she might have been convicted of manslaughter, and might have
received a light sentence. But the evidence so undeniably revealed
deliberate and merciless premeditation, that the only defense attempted
by her counsel was madness, and the only alternative left to a righteous
jury was a verdict which condemned the woman to death. Those mischievous
members of the community, whose topsy turvy sympathies feel for the
living criminal and forget the dead victim, attempted to save her by
means of high flown petitions and contemptible correspondence in the
newspapers. But the Judge held firm; and the Home Secretary held firm.
They were entirely right; and the public were scandalously wrong.

Our Chaplain endeavored to offer the consolations of religion to the
condemned wretch. She refused to accept his ministrations in language
which filled him with grief and horror.

On the evening before the execution, the reverend gentleman laid on my
table his own written report of a conversation which had passed between
the Prisoner and himself.

"I see some hope, sir," he said, "of inclining the heart of this woman
to religious belief, before it is too late. Will you read my report, and
say if you agree with me?"